In the food processing industry, in particular in heavily soiled areas, such as slaughterhouses or meat and fish processing industries, tenacious soiling through grease, protein and starch residues is the rule of the day. According to a practical state of the art, for cleaning such stubborn soiling, alkaline cleaning agents containing chlorine are regularly used. Because of the chlorine content of the cleaning agent, combined with an alkaline medium, the grease, starch and protein soiling is dissociated, whereby shorter molecule components are created from molecules with a longer chain, which are then capable of being emulsified by surfactants present in the cleaning agents.
However, the high volumes of waste water created in this way cause severe problems because of their chlorine content. On the one hand, the environmental effect of waste water containing chlorine is not insignificant. On the other hand, if accidentally instead of an alkaline medium an acid medium exists or is created, gaseous chlorine may be generated, creating an occupational hazard. Therefore, the use of oxidising cleaning agents based on chlorine is generally problematic in the said industry areas.
Hence the problem is posed to provide a less ecologically harmful cleaning process, which however, as regards its cleaning properties, is at least equal to processes using cleaning agents containing chlorine, or which exceed the cleaning action of the latter at equal or even lower dosages. A further purpose of the invention is to provide an appropriate device for carrying out the process.